The Color Inside
by soylent green was taken
Summary: An erotic vignette of the K/Z household at night. Very little in the way of plot, just intimacy and the dark currents of dreams.


**The Color Inside**

_We dream — it is good we are dreaming —  
It would hurt us — were we awake -  
_- Emily Dickinson

_In this world  
love has no color  
yet how deeply my body  
is stained by yours._  
- Izumi Shikibu

What can we say of their day's end? When their duties are fulfilled, their plans laid out, their scores settled and injuries revenged? How do they take their leisure, in that crooked dark house above the trees? For it is certain that they both make a den behind its windows. Their intimacy is no secret. But as to its nature, what do we know? There is much conjecture – borne of disgust and envy and lewd fascination – but its products are as predictable as pornography always is.

Doubtless it would disappoint many to learn that, for all their closeness, Kunzite and Zoisite do not spend their private lives in an endless clinch. While it is true that they share a home, they keep separate quarters and sleep most nights in solitary beds, as chaste as children. The erotics of their coupledom are, on the whole, too deep and slow and strange to manifest on a nightly basis. We must remember, after all, that they are not human- or rather, they are various lengths removed from human, Kunzite being much further from the mark than his mate. This is not to say that they do not desire each other in ways familiar to the human heart. Indeed, they desire each other very much; Zoisite in particular is nearly undone at times by his yearning. Nor is the choreography of their lovemaking, when it occurs, beyond the scope of human experience. But there are twists that would puzzle some folk and frighten the rest.

Tonight seems an unlikely night for sex, but it will happen anyway and you will see what I mean.

Kunzite is already asleep. His wars against the undark tax his power sorely, so he retreats often into a blackness of his own making and abides there as long as he can. A chthonogene, his strength is drawn from the deep places of the earth, and regenerative dreams move through him like water underground: cold, dark, pitiless currents.

Not so Zoisite. For all the boy's adaptation to the dark world below, his brain blazes with a dire light. His slumber is fretful; he bolts from a half-dream, sweating and furious, then settles back slowly into his nest of silk and dead flowers. He counts thunder, chews his hair, and talks aloud to his absent Kunzite. When sleep does not come again, he unmakes his body and drifts as smoke from room to room, coiling through the house until he comes to the inevitable threshold. Then the thick familiar smell of the other's nighttime breathing, the warm deadweight under the covers, the convenient hollow in which make himself whole, and curl up, and wait for the night's end.

Kunzite's bedchamber is at the very roots of the house. It is windowless and unlamped; phosphorescent mosses vein the walls. It is a silent, wild place, and though the darkness is nothing to his cat's vision, Zoisite doesn't care for it. He prefers warmth and comfort and just a little more light, and though he'd never say it, he wishes Kunzite would choose to visit _his_ room more often. In all their years together, that has happened only four times: twice at Zoisite's invitation (so formal and hesitant and roundabout that Kunzite nearly failed to grasp its meaning), once when Zoisite was half dead from poison and Kunzite visited on him an antidote of memorable vileness, and once – an occasion so extraordinary it seemed like a dream - when Zoisite awoke in a panic of suffocation to find Kunzite's huge weight draped over top of him, like the pelt of a white wolf.

But tonight Zoisite is all indifference to his surroundings. He has descended to the basement in not search of comfort or repose but with a keen, vulpine appetite. His skinny assassin's body is luminous in the dark, a bare lamp of desire moving across the room. It was desire that bled into the broken tissue of his sleep, mixing with scraps of dream until it formed a plan, but like all plans, it needed Kunzite's permission to proceed. Zoisite roots out the slow-breathing bone heap and cleaves tightly to its long sprawl. Permission in his mind is a flexible concept. It is granted when Kunzite, warm from the night-clinger, throws off the covers and rolls onto his back.

There.

Against the dusky skin of his belly, the thing looks quite black, but it is in fact blue— deep indigo-blue and slick as an eel. Zoisite has been waiting all night for the sight of it. It amazes him to remember the sick lurch he felt when first met with proof of his lover's otherness: the raised ridge of skin beginning where there ought to have been a dangling ballsack, bisecting the groin and terminating in a parted lip like the mouth of an orchid. It seemed full, portentous, a secret concealing further secrets. Kunzite had taken Zoisite's hand and put it to the soft-hard sheath, coaxing him to feel the pressure of the organ inside, which issued forth gradually into the boy's open palm. It was not at all like a human erection – turgid, mushroom-capped – but supple and tapered like a tongue. It was wet, and its color was the color of Kunzite inside.

Zoisite handles it expertly now. His hands no longer tremble when it surges in his grip, nor does he scruple to take it in his mouth, though he must be careful not to let it gag him. He has come to admire its eloquence. Like the rest of Kunzite, it stays hidden most of the time. It needs drawing out. It is dark and graceful and just a little bit frightening. And really, is it that much stranger than his own thing, a budding red tulip in a sock of loose skin?

Only halfway out of its sleeve and already both of Zoisite's hands are full of twisting wet midnight. It is the color that he loves the most, jewel-dark and impossible, a color – he flatters himself – that no one else has ever seen or touched. He glances up in the midst of his reverie to look for rips in the sleep-shadow lying over his lover's face. One of two things will happen soon. Either Kunzite will surface, perhaps with a mind to play this game, or else he will groan deeply, lock his arms about Zoisite's shoulders, and roll them both back under his dream. His sleep is powerful magic; he can carry others into it if he wishes.

Zoisite is still unsure which it will be when he detects the first quickening of the body beneath him. A sigh heaves up the heavy bone cage; Zoisite leaps off and out of reach. Kunzite is awake. Up goes one long eyelid, and for a moment the gaze behind it is black and awful. Then a cracked-glass iris coalesces at its centre, filling with pale shades of sky-blue and pearl until it acquires the opacity of old, deep ice. Kunzite blinks up at the ceiling, but his waking consciousness is bent on the hot bright presence beside him.

"Zoisite."

The boy flushes happily to hear himself named, even as he retreats to the other end of the bed. Lying on his side with his head half-hidden by blankets:

"Kunzite-sama, I couldn't sleep."

The truth, but not at all what he wants to say. His boldness has deserted him.

"Do you _want_ to sleep?" Kunzite is fully awake now and his voice has its customary heft. It is a blunt object: heavy, unyielding, promising pain. Zoisite has become adept at dodging between the hard words to retrieve fragments of tenderness left in their wake— laughter, sometimes, or the soft animal groan made into Zoisite's neck when settling onto him just _so_. No, he doesn't want to sleep.

Kunzite rolls an eye sideways at him and smiles a crooked Kunzite smile. "Then come here, little brother."

That is an utterance to make Zoisite weak. The nickname, ironic and faintly lewd, is the closest thing to a term of endearment Kunzite has for his mate. It comes from an ancient chapter in their friendship, a time before memory, before the moon and earth had their disagreement, when Kunzite was Endymion's strong ox and Zoisite was a wild golden thing. It is only ever spoken in the deepest intimacy, as an invitation – another tacit form of permission – and its effect on Zoisite is positively aphrodisiacal. He slides closer and plumps a honey-colored head on Kunzite's pillow.

"Are you sure you don't want to sleep?"

"Yes, Kunzite-sama."

"Not to dream with me?"

"Not tonight."

Kunzite rolls on top of him, sleep-warm and heavy as basalt. His prick is all the way out; it paints a wet line across Zoisite's thigh. "Then you'd like to lie together for a while?"

"Perhaps I would, Kunzite-sama."

It happens in an instant: Zoisite on his back with his knees up and apart, breathing the way he learned to breathe during those first dry rough fucks with boys his own age. Pliancy and acquiescence in the face of pain. But that was worlds ago, a primitive species of lovemaking. _Barbaric_, one of his favourite words. With Kunzite it is different. For what Kunzite does, Zoisite has no words. In the earliest days of their intimacy, he would lie whole nights in a swoon, narcotized with disbelief as his uncanny lover opened him wide and placed unspeakable gifts inside. Some were delivered by mouth and others by hand; some were tender and some had thorns; and some, like tonight's, were pulled rampant from the black soil of a dream.

After penetration comes stillness. No urgent thrusting, no rocking to and fro; Kunzite leans close into his mate and holds fast.

Zoisite groans. He does not want to disturb this silence – this bright tense beautiful peace - but what is happening inside of him has a voice of its own. Kunzite is wringing him clean. Surge after surge, the tongue of living rock pushes upward into him, pressing hard against the walls of his body and bidding them move. Sweat darkens the curls at his temples and the pools of his eyes water over. But he won't close them - won't let the heavy liquid darkness that is Kunzite's embrace pull him under just yet - for he did not come to this room to sleep, or to die.

Instead he fixes his gaze on the indigo canopy of the bed. It is, in fact, the underside of Kunzite's cloak, thrown upward to hang in protection over its sleeping master. The only true raiment of the Shi'tennou: all the rest is merely flesh in disguise. But it is not without its living qualities, and Zoisite knows well the character of its embrace. He smiles upward in recognition, and Kunzite smiles at his smile, cradling the fine white face in his hands.

"Someday you'll have one of your own, little brother," Kunzite whispers, pressing closer that he may begin his real work. "And then you won't have any need for me."

"Kunzite-sama, I don't want that."

"What do you want, then? Hm?" Thumbs stroking Zoisite's damp hair. Inside, another surge, and some hot and improbable rearrangement occurs.

"Kunzite-sama—" Zoisite heaves and quivers.

"Not to be the greatest of the Four?"

"No—"

"Not to be the first servant of the radiant Dark?"

"I..."

"Not to be me?"

"Kunzite-sama! You're being cruel."

"No, I'm being curious. Why did you come to me tonight and wake me as you did? You aren't a young boy anymore, though you may look it. You owe me no favours. What can I give you now, that you can't take for yourself?" Wicked flash in the pale eyes like a fish turning fast. "Perhaps you want me to be cruel? I can be that."

"Kunzite-sama, please be quiet, and don't be cruel. I only wanted… I only ever want…"

He grabs beseeching handfuls of Kunzite's ghost-horse mane and yanks it in frustration. These are questions he knows the answers to. They are the only things he knows with any certainty, his sole beliefs, stronger than Beryl's edicts or the dogma of the Great Ruler. They are his first thoughts upon waking and the last he will abandon before his final, unbroken sleep. But he can no more utter them than he can make Kunzite disclose his own sly self.

And so Kunzite must content himself the usual half-answer: his own name – dense swooping crush of sound - broadcast to the ceiling as Zoisite clenches and makes wetness between them. The kelp-colored eyes are glazed and failing; Zoisite is sinking down into himself and Kunzite must work to keep him topside. He pinches the boy's ear and whispers into it, suave talk without questions, tender seductive words to flow into the drooping flowerstem and bring it up again, for their coupling is not finished yet. _Beautiful one. Favourite one. Only one. _Slowly the small one comes back to life. Rapture darkens on his face. What he wants. To open, to be opened. This much Kunzite discerns; this much he can provide.

Now begins the rocking, now the pushes and thrusts. Kunzite is an animal after all. Having made its supple way inward, his organ grows rigid and swells; it is ready to take the measure of Zoisite's wordless need. He hooks a thumb into the boy's mouth and the young one latches on, sucking hard. If he bites, Kunzite will know to stop. Otherwise there will be no more gentle pauses, no more teasing or talk. There is real danger here, real power. What Zoisite pulled out of the night with his willful clever hands will not subside until it fills its surrogate sheath with its own particular gift— a soul-bruise, indelible and ink-dark, painted in a color that no one else will ever see or touch. Zoisite knows this; it was his aim from the beginning. He feels the onrush of a wild private joy and spreads himself wide to receive it, arms bound tight across his lover's back.

"Zoisite."

Hollow ache at the base of the spine and the rank smell of a body undone.

"Zoisite, wake up_._"

A piece of time has fallen away. Zoisite clutches backward at it in a spasm of dismay, but it slips through his grasp and shatters out of sight. What has he missed? Kunzite is doing something businesslike to him that is not a caress. Cleaning him. It's over.

"Zoisite, open your eyes." Bossy older-brother voice now. It must be nearly time to get up, anyway.

Zoisite curls spitefully on his side, eyes shut tight as fists. Drawing his body inward, he searches it for traces, but there is nothing except the usual cramps and a widening loneliness. Unfair.

"_Zoisite_—" Hard smack across the buttocks. Zoisite's eyes snap open in outrage, and it is then that he sees it.

Something has happened to the bed. Where before Kunzite's cloak hung suspended overhead, there now weaves a canopy of branches. The light beneath them is strange and bright, full of green scents not of this world. And under the trees, where a moment ago spread the wrecked topography of the bedclothes— flowers. Crowds of flowers, flowers of all types, more than could ever grow naturally in such close profusion. Lily and iris, crocus and snowdrop, rhododendron, morning glory, orange camellia, bugles of white bindweed and wild pink roses, poppy and peony and – eddying between them like mischievous thoughts – the shaken blossoms of stone fruit. Surface flowers, day flowers, sun-drinking and alive with bees. Zoisite can't help himself. He uncoils to their radiance, turning toward them as they would turn to the sun. There is a familiarity in this spectacle that cuts him in a strange place— not memory, exactly, but something that might become memory if given a chance to abide in time.

Bending his great head under the blossoms, Kunzite is a changed thing. His clay-colored skin has warmed to caramel, and his hair – usually the blue-white of snow under moonlight – is now a translucent skein of shifting seashell tints, never quite white, never quite any color that can be named. His narrow pale eyes seem brave and old and somehow sad without any darkness to give them depth.

"Do you like what you see? I've been waiting many nights for you to come and take it from me."

"This is mine?"

"No, it's mine." Kunzite smirks, looking a little more like himself. "For now, at least. As I said, you'll have one of your own someday. Then you won't have any need of me."

"Kunzite-sama, I don't understand."

"That's good."

And with that, Kunzite reaches overhead and pulls the branches of the bower down. There is a sudden wind and a shower of blossoms, and for a clamorous moment all the flowers throw wide their bright throats. Then something like night falls over the scene. It falls on Zoisite, too, and he gives a startled cry as its fabric brushes over his face. When it sweeps away, there is the bed: flattened pillows, rucked-up covers, banal disarray.

Kunzite is already in uniform. About his shoulders he draws his cloak, dove-white on the outside, indigo lining winking like a dark joke. Then he stands over the bed and looks down at Zoisite, tilting his head the way he always does when about to make some pronouncement, charming or atrocious, on the matter of his young companion.

"I'm glad you didn't take all that I offered you tonight."

"Kunzite-sama, I tried—"

"No, you didn't. You were after something else, I think. Though what it was I can't imagine." His eyes have back their winter wolf gleam; he grins a grin with knives in it.

Blushing with indignation and a modicum of pleasure, Zoisite allows himself to be hauled out of bed. He stands in his skin for a moment or two before binding about himself the semblance of fabric, leather, and brass. His quick slim body rejoices to be back in its armor: coat of monkish charcoal buttoned tight to the throat, jackboots striking hard notes into the floor. He lets Kunzite turn him round once for inspection, lets him tie back his hair and neaten the gold corkscrews that won't lie down. These ministrations are ritualistic and tender, a prelude to the day ahead. For their night is over, and the two of them – ancient shimmering creatures in their skins of matching grey – have much work to do.

**Acknowledgements**

_Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon_ is the property of Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha Comics, and Toei Animation.

Emily Dickinson quotation is from "J:531," in _The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson _(Little, Brown, & Co., 1960)

Izumi Shikibu quotation is from _Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan: Murasaki Shikibu and Others_ (Dover, 2003)


End file.
